In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?
The title is a music reference, because when you’re the lead trumpet player, depending on where you live it’s called “first chair” or “first desk.” Everyone has a chair, and they’re ranked. Yes, I have been as low as 7th chair. I wish I’d done better on that audition. But I was 7th in the city of Houston. Beat that with stick.
I was also 13 years old.
I am not a prodigy. I make a lot of mistakes. I’ve splatted wrong notes on the back walls of MOST Houston auditoriums, but a time I didn’t and it went really well, I was on a television show called “Black Voices.” I was a soloist during Summer Jazz Workshop. Didn’t make it less funny when I was on camera. I am just picturing all my black friends falling over with laughter right now. “You were on what now?” My favorite was the logo over my big ass glasses.
Another time it went really well was when I was in one of the jazz bands (I was in Jazz II. I told you I wasn’t a prodigy. But again, different playing field. You know who else was in Jazz II? Robert Glasper from “The Robert Glasper Experiment.” and Jon Durbin from “The Suffers.” If I’d stuck with it, maybe I’d have a Tiny Desk Concert of my own, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. I loved performance. I was unconvinced by hard work. It’s not because I didn’t want to do hard work. It’s that my embouchure was wrong (how you set your jaw and ilps), which made practicing for more than a half hour complete murder, and it’s good concerts don’t last that long because I’m not sure I would have made it through all of them, either. For that reason alone, symphony was wonderful for me because in general, trumpet parts in classical music alternate between resting for 200 measures and the most majestic clarion call you’ve ever heard. It feels like being a goalie when your team is superb.
Most of the time, everyone is on the other end of the pitch, but when it’s your turn, you come up BIG. You have to have enormous balls for classical music, because a random eighth note high A in the middle of nowhere and perplexingly alone is not uncommon. The other thing s that I could hit a high A out of nowhere, but it may wander a bit in pitch from left to right until I find dead center. In classical music, this is not an option. It must be crisp and clean, every note tapered. The hard work was never the notes, though. The hard work for me was in reading music the first time accurately, which takes thousands of hours to learn how to do.
I have never been so relieved in my life than when I went to a huge ass choir competition in high school. The sight reading portion was lifted straight out of the United Methodist Hymnal. It was the first time in my life I had “sight read” anything so perfectly. And no, I did not tell anyone…. no trumpet player (or soprano, for that matter) would tell you they had an edge at something. Trumpets are line cooks. Sopranos are line cooks with nail polish.
I got into choir the same way. I auditioned, and I got into the junior varsity choir. I asked the choir director, “are you sure? I’ve done major works at my church…. messiahs and requiems and all that stuff.” Believe me, questioning her was the hardest work I’ve ever done, but I came up big. She gives me this contemptuous look and throws a Handel at me. Hard. Then, she picks the most exposed, most difficult entrance she can find……………… FOR HER. Bitch, I earned this. She thought she was so clever, but I’d been in the adult choir for three or four years by this point. You know what you do EVERY SINGLE YEAR? The Messiah, or at least highlights. Few churches put on “the whole thing” (in quotes because even that is redacted most of the time by taking out optional sections. It’s long. It’s really, really long. And you do “The Hallelujah Chorus” occasionally at Easter as well. This was not a piece with which I was unfamiliar. I’d memorized the highlights by now…. and if I could explain my voice type, it would be “Charlotte Church as a teen.” My voice (and hers) has matured, but still what people at Bridgeport used to call my “high, high, fluty voice.” I drove that audition like I stole it, and I was the first person in the history of Clements to be in varsity band and choir at the same time.
I’ve just noticed I sound like an obnoxious dick. It goes with the territory, but I figure I can tell you I’m good at something when I’ve spent so much time telling you all the ways in which I need to get it together and how my life is an emotional dumpster fire of my own making a lot of the time.
Additionally, I gave up trumpet a long time ago. I’ve taken prescription meth for a very long time (Adderall or Concerta, depending on what release schedule we’re doing this month……… eyeroll……..), and it has been murder on my jaw and teeth, just like for junkies. Therefore, playing my horn is painful because of the sound vibrations. The fact that I don’t play anymore has not occurred to the rest of my personality, because I have turned ego up to eleven when I need it. The key words are “when I need it.” I don’t need to walk around DC feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof all the time. I’m sure that if I dressed like a baller I could walk into any meeting anywhere and fake it. You cannot convince me for love or money that I do not have the smarts to be a Rep or a Senator. Not possible anymore. But I have the mental acuity to do the job. I am woefully unelectable, mostly because I would hate every minute of campaigning. I would frustrate the fuck out of my support staff because my answer to every problem would just be “let’s skip it. There will be people there. ” But if I was in Congress doing the job, I’d be as diligent as ADHD allows you to be, and on my worst day I would wipe the floor with Y’all Queda. I’d probably be censured by my own party for my language, but nothing I said would be untrue. Congress has issues and they scare me. The legislation doesn’t matter right now. The people are sub-par, and that’s okay now.
Because of all of these experiences (except working in Congress. I was a political science student, so I know about working in that part of Washington, I just don’t.), writing sets me on fire. I’m old enough now that I really have stories. It’s age that gives me credibility now, because I don’t have letters to fall back on. Graduating from college has been a shit show because I am barely capable of working a full-time job and going to school. I should have stayed the extra year in Houston to finish up, but I had a partner with a very lucrative job offer who said “go to George Mason. it’s right across the road.” I didn’t even get a chance to enroll and register for classes before that deal fell apart.
Besides, I got my money’s worth, anyway. I wasn’t one of Brene Brown’s kids at Graduate School of Social Work, but she was one of mine when I was the supervisor of their computer lab. I actually got into the Graduate School of Social Work contingent upon my BA. I’d just helped the Dean figure out a very complicated computer issue and she was very grateful. But I didn’t get into GSSW based on that issue. It was based on the conversation I had with her while trying to fix it. I always chat about nothing because people have no idea what I’m doing. All they hear is “blah, blah, blah, I’m done.” So, we engage in small talk and she’s the Dean of the GSSW and I’m an INFJ. I didn’t get in because of what I do. I got in because of who I am.
The thing is, though, I’d forgotten all about it because all I heard from Kathleen was “blah, blah, blah let’s go to DC.” And if I had thought about it, it wouldn’t have changed my mind because unless I’m at my family’s house and never leave to do anything, Houston feels like a toxic mess. The only exception to this is that Lindsay still lives there and introverts don’t make friends. An extrovert adopts you and drags you into public.
That’s the hard work right there. Being industrious enough to make my own friends and get my own dates. It took a lot of courage to lay it all out in front of Zac and say “this is what I’m dealing with, are you in?” In fact he was. ❤ The added bonus is that Zac told me that he was military intelligence the second time I met him, but not the first. So, I actually was brave enough to get my own date that time and manifested a really great partner, because my interest in intelligence doesn’t come from him. It just provides us with “intelligent” conversation.
He doesn’t emotionally overload me and I don’t do it to him. That’s because I process like a lesbian all day and by the time it’s evening I do not give a fuck about my feelings. (I just laughed so hard I would have made Oliver jump straight in to the air if he was here.) Zac doesn’t hear my bullshit, because I don’t need him for that. In fact, it’s great when he opens up to me about his problems, because I’ve spent enough time on myself.
Editor’s Note: Straight women are crazy. Absolutely insane. Why do you not date bi men when you’re all over gay men like white on rice? I would bet A LOT of money that my boyfriend smells better than yours and I’ve never even met him. Remember when we used to have a special term just for straight men who bathed? Straight women worry a whole, whole lot when his ex is male. They can save a lot of time and energy by not doing that.
Also, I’m a good enough writer that I could have gotten into a GSSW anywhere. You see all the stream of consciousness crap, but I clean up nice. 😉 I sometimes feel bad that you’re getting the B-sides and rough drafts, but at the same time, this is the hard work (said in Kristen Bell’s voice). Blogging is writing as a valid art form. It is a lesliecology of brain droppings in which I can cherry pick the best lines I’ve come up with and use them elsewhere. So much of my writing comes from e-mail and Facebook comments because I’m reflecting on something that someone else said, or something I’ve written previously works even better in another context. Making the commitment to write every day without fail. I got up to 63 days before I broke my streak for one. This is because writing is a muscle. I will not be a good writer until I can write in any mood, in any situation, in any anything. Creativity is a grind, and I will not be where I want to be without woodshedding, a music term that extrapolates nicely here.
When you’re practicing, some parts of a piece are really easy. The notes, that is. You still have to craft a narrative and that’s where the work comes in. That being said, you have to be technically accurate before you can craft the narrative, so you isolate the four measures in which you’re really going to be screwed during a concert if you miss. In a symphony, you have moments where if you miss a note, it won’t be noticeable because there are 150 people playing next to you. At others, there are three. When you’re out there all by yourself, it is frankly really fucking scary. You learn to manage, but it doesn’t go away.
Through voice lessons, I’ve become a phenomenon with singing comparatively.
It’s not how good of a singer I am, it’s what a train wreck of a trumpet player I was. I mean, obviously, there are high points to when I was living that life, but I feel so much more at home in my body as a singer because apparently the large amount of metal in front of my face was blocking my talent.But now that I’ve worked really hard in all things, given my whole heart to everything and everyone I’ve ever loved, I only have one thing left to say.
I am fulfilled.
Second chair no longer exists.
Stories That Are All True 